The diet-bacteria combination that could stop colon cancer

Did you know that teams of scientists and doctors across the world are now taking a step back from the traditional prescription for deadly diseases, like colorectal cancer, and beginning to dig deeper into how combinations of diet and natural supplements can not only prevent them but stop their spread?

It may sound like nothing more than a fantasy, but study after study is beginning to prove that the idea is based on sound scientific fact.

Now, new research by teams of scientists at the University of Luxembourg is once again proving that diet may have far more to do with beating cancer than we ever knew.

Prebiotics plus probiotics stop cancer progression

Those Luxembourg researchers started with two big ideas…

First, that your diet can have major effects on the microbiome of your gut — the populations of tiny beneficial bacteria that live in your intestines, help you digest your food, boost your immune system, and keep you healthy. In fact, you may have heard quite a bit about gut health since it’s become a buzzword over the last decade. Taking probiotics to increase the number of beneficial bacteria has become increasingly popular.

The second idea was that diets rich in fiber (also referred to as prebiotics) have been shown to reduce the risk of ending up with certain cancers, like colorectal cancer.

This led the researchers to design an experiment combining the two to find out if adding both probiotics and prebiotics to your diet could result in better cancer prevention — and possibly even stop its progression once it starts.

The teams were able to cultivate colorectal cancer cells using cutting edge technology and then combine them with specific pro- and prebiotics, both together and separately. And, they found that it was only the combination of prebiotics and probiotics that led to beneficial effects.

In fact, they discovered that when they added both dietary fiber (prebiotics) and beneficial bacteria to those cancer cells, they were able to both slow the growth of the cancer cells and lower their drug resistance.

They were even able to use the combination to block the ability of the cancer cells to self-renew.

“Currently, cancer patients are not provided with evidence-based personalized dietary interventions during chemotherapy treatment. Our results provide support for exploiting the food-microbiome interactions as a supportive therapeutic approach in anti-cancer therapy,” explains Dr. Kacy Greenhalgh, post-doc within the Eco-Systems Biology group at the University of Luxembourg and the lead author of the study.

Your food microbiome

So, if you want to exploit your food microbiome to leverage the cancer-protecting benefits probiotics and prebiotics could deliver, here’s what to eat:

• Probiotic-rich food – To get the best in probiotics, add yogurt, kefir, buttermilk, sauerkraut, kimchi and kombucha to your daily diet.
• Prebiotic fiber – Healthy sources of fiber that can up your prebiotic game include garlic, onions, leeks, asparagus, Jerusalem artichokes, and dandelion greens.

Combining diet with healthy bacteria could be your key to preventing or stopping deadly cancers, like colorectal cancer. For other foods that could lower your colon cancer risk, check out this article by my colleague Jenny Smiechowski.

Sources:

1. Right combination of diet and bacteria limits cancer progression — EurekAlert!